Understanding climate change and the role of forest protection as a means of reducing emissions is a popular topic, with many forests needed for the paper to discuss it on. It is therefore easy to become rather daunted by where to turn for a balanced discussion of the subject. This book provides a timely, impressive and comprehensive collection of papers to arm you with all the latest information and key debates.

The book is made up of five sections. A background to the forestry and climate change agenda makes up the first, along with explanation of current market mechanisms for forest conservation. Part two provides a background to forestry in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto protocol. For anyone approaching this field for the first time or for those with a reasonable understanding of the issues, these two sections provide an accessible and insightful description of both what has occurred to date, why and what the implications of this are for current forest policy.

Part three gets down to business, addressing lessons learnt and methodological considerations for forest carbon projects, including permanence and monitoring carbon credits. Part four deals with the key, but complex issues of how Avoided Deforestation will be incentivized and accounted for post-Kyoto. This section is covering new ground and is therefore very helpful but not easily accessible for anyone without a good understanding of the issues. Some of the technical papers, such as that on carbon accounting, require greater brain power than I had to hand. The final part addresses the experience of national systems and voluntary carbon offset projects.

Some of the case studies, although clearly describing innovative projects, are not sufficiently objective to provide any real insight into the social realities and practical issues facing key stakeholders on the ground. This is a general point within the carbon forestry field, as those involved are often tied into non-disclosure agreements. Greater objectivity and openness on the practicalities and growing pains of projects that have been in existence for some years is, however, crucial to inform future project development.

The main contribution of this book is bringing the expert knowledge and recommendations of the contributors together in one place. This is invaluable for a better understanding of this fast developing field and, as such, this book will only remain relevant if regularly updated. This is likely to be a difficult task. In the short-term what is most important is that the key recommendations are taken forward to shape the developing policy arena. Bearing in mind the range and affiliations of the contributors, it is likely that this has and will continue to occur.

This is a dense read in its entirety. I struggled to make my way through a number of the chapters but would recommend it, particularly well-chosen sections of it, as key reading to anyone wanting to understand the key complexities of this debate.